Caltech Senior Wins Engineering Competition

The strategy for a mechanical engineering victory is simple: score first, then pin your opponent down.

The plan worked for Caltech senior Ben Turk, who swept through the 13th annual ME72 Engineering Design Competition Thursday in front of a rowdy audience of students and faculty at the school’s Beckman Auditorium.

The 18 students competing this year were asked to build machines that could push a hockey puck, golf ball and rubber hose washer up and over an eight-inch hill on a 4-foot by 8-foot table.

Turk built a motorized device on wheels that looked like a miniature tank. The gadget, controlled by a joystick on a cable, nudged the items over the hill, them rammed competing devices into submission.

“Once you figure out a good joystick position, you’re set,” Turk said.

Erik Antonsson, the professor who uses the competition as part of his class, started the event to encourage students to apply what they’ve learned to practical problems.

Each year, he said, the students are given a bag of “high-tech junk,” including motors, tubing and gears and an outline of the competition.

The students spend 10 weeks designing, building and testing devices to complete the task assigned, which changes each year.

Although the competition is not a final exam, Antonsson said, his students take it seriously.

“Their juices just get flowing when they have a place to compete in public,” Antonsson said. “They put more effort into it, knowing there will be a crowd.”